


Yes, All Women (but not all men)

by tobinlaughing



Category: Agents of SHIELD - Fandom, Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Death Threats, Gen, MRAs, MRAs as terrorists, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Threats of Violence, assholes on the internet, men's rights activists, mentions of threats of rape and violence, synopses of threats MRAs have used towards women, tw: threats of rape, tw: threats of violence against female identifying individuals, tw: threats of violence against women, using the mcu to fix the world's problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 06:08:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1733897
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobinlaughing/pseuds/tobinlaughing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Agent Coulson and his team are doing something about the MRA assholes on the internet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Recruiting

**Author's Note:**

> I want someone to do something. This is why there are superheroes and fanfiction, right?
> 
> Trigger warning: I have included summaries of some of the vitriol found on MRA and PUAHate forums. These include threats of death, violence, sexual violence, and rape, aimed at female-identifying humans of all varieties, as well as persons of many racial and ethnic backgrounds. (I'm phrasing it this way to be as broad as possible, so that if you feel you fit that description and might have triggered problems with reading things like this. I'm not trying to be condescending or derivative and I apologize if you feel that I am doing so)
> 
> You don't have to agree with me. If you don't agree with me, I don't have to hear about it. OK?

Coulson knows about how Cap and Fury came to loggerheads over the nature of some of Cap's missions, so he's steeled himself for an argument, at least, when he and the Team finally catch up to him. They're all in Washington, populating a 24-hour coffee shop during yet another Seattle downpour. The necessity for rain gear, hats, and umbrellas is making the incognito part of their movements so much easier. It's almost a disappointment when Steve and Sam agree to the mission without hesitation.

Of course, it doesn't start there: when Coulson slides into the booth across from Sam and Steve, there are exactly two and a half minutes of stunned, silent staring before Steve's face lights up in that joyful-toothpaste smile that no one gets to see any more. He reaches across the table and grabs Phil's hand in both of his, tightening his grip just enough to reassure himself—by way of Phil's slight wince at the pressure—that Coulson is real and alive and _hell yeah sitting across from him_. But it's Sam who speaks first.

“Sir, I'm pretty sure I'm honored to meet you,” Falcon bobs his head respectfully in Coulson's direction, and while he's not grinning from ear to ear like Steve is, Phil can tell that he's happy to see his friend so happy. 

“Likewise, Mr Wilson,” Coulson manages to extricate himself from Steve's grip to shake Sam's hand, and braces himself for what will probably be an onslaught of disbelief, anger, and disappointment—the Five Stages In Reverse—once Steve's initial happiness wears off...but he should have known, as the founding member of the Presumed Dead But Not Actually Deceased Club, that Steve would give him more than a little slack on his resurrection. They trade stories instead, mostly centered around what a lot of former SHIELD agents have referred to as “the whole HYDRA deal”. Finally the conversation steers back around to what they're all doing in Seattle. “Gentlemen,” Coulson slides a thick file folder (missing the SHIELD logo across the front, but still conveying the top-secretness of this project) across the table. “We have a mission and we'd like your help.”

He prays—or hopes fervently; Phil Coulson isn't irreligious, but he's not the Good Methodist Boy that his mother raised anymore—while Steve and Sam pass the dossiers, photos, and screenshots back and forth between them. They're holding just the tip of the iceberg: this one folder is representative of months of literally constant monitoring, studying, and trolling that Skye and Simmons have put in, and while Phil knows that the information is valuable, the toll it's taken on his agents is devastating. 

Page after page (after page after page) of vitriolic bile spewed onto the internet, condensed into toxic 'manifestos' filled with as many different kinds of poison as spelling and grammatical errors—all aimed at women. Straight women, lesbians, transwomen, asexual or nonbinary or white or black or any color at all: fifty-one percent of the world's population is reviled, hated, and held up in these documents as not only the root of all evil, but paradoxically as the oppressing heel on the neck of the world's men while at the same time painted as a collection of subhuman objects. The number of contradictions in each paragraph alone is staggering, but one can only count those if one can get past the subject matter. And that's hard. It's very, very hard. 

Skye and Simmons are huddled in a pair of overstuffed armchairs in the corner and, for once, not chained to their respective laptops. Each has her phone and tablet, of course, but Simmons has escaped into the pages of Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_ and Skye is reading....something with a skeleton in a baby carriage on the cover. Tripp loaned her the book when Coulson _strongly suggested_ that they take a break from the internet for the evening. Halfway through the thick paperback, Skye is smiling occasionally at a clever passage, and Simmons' face has lost the drawn, pinched-in look she's worn since this recon project started. Still, his agents used to be strong, self-assured, and unafraid. The guilt Phil Coulson feels for forcing them to abandon that self-confidence is huge...but he needed his best people on the recon, and Skye and Simmons are nothing if not the best. 

“Tell me your play,” Steve closes the folder and pushes it away, the revulsion on his face echoed in the whiteness of his knuckles as he clasps his hands on the table. Sam's expression is more thunderous and angry, but there's less surprise there. 

“I have a few teams,” Phil begins, taking a sip of coffee. “What you've read is the crest of a wave that's been building for a few years now. That mess in Santa Barbara? If I—if we'd been moving a little faster, we could've gotten the guy before he killed seven people. We—well, our fake FBI/CIA/Homeland Security task force--we are now classifying these writings as hate crimes and threats of terrorism. It's already gone too far, but I'm hoping we can get these guys off the map before they go any further. You saw the mention of May 31? That means that by the end of next month we have the potential to see a dozen or more of these killing sprees happen across the United States, the UK, and Australia. We want to try and prevent them.”

Steve's face is closed and deadly serious, and for a moment Phil thinks he's going to argue. But then-- “I'm in.” He gulps down the rest of his coffee and sets the cup aside. “What do you need me to do?”

“Got a question, sir, if you don't mind,” Sam interposes, and Coulson nods. “Don't you think it's a little, um, _on the nose_ to be asking a bunch of men to swoop in and save the world from these guys? I mean, you've got a team full of kickass women who should, in my opinion, be given all the license in the world to go and kick as much ass as they deem necessary.”

“You make a good point, Mr Wilson, and one that we've discussed amongst my team at length. First of all—I'm short on bodies. If I could do this with teams of mixed male-and-female agents, you bet I would; but the whole HYDRA explosion and the brain-drain from SHIELD to places like Stark and AIM has left me with almost no non-superhero options in this. So I've gotta tap my superhero contacts for this mission, and you two just happen to be male heroes. Second: Skye and Simmons, my two best analysts, are sitting over in that corner. They've been wading through this trough of filth for the last three months, almost constantly, twenty-four hours a day. Even when they log off, they can't escape this behavior, the reminders of this crap. But they keep doing it, because they know that in the end, we're going to get these s-o-b's and it's going to be their work that locks the doors to those cells in solitary. 

“Third...well, you read some of what these scumbags have planned. I don't doubt that some of them are more than capable of what they've threatened; that's the reason for this mission. And I will not place my people in harm's way if I can help it. That means male infil teams, male arresting agents, and once we get to interrogation and property search, male-and-female pairs of agents to watch each other's backs.”

“I can only imagine the uproar one of these guys would put up to have a 'subhuman plaything' cuff him and drag him out of his mom's basement,” Sam agrees, his face twisting as though the words were sour in his mouth. Which, Phil reflects, they probably were. “I'm guessing that all-male infil teams are going to make the initial arrests a lot easier.”

“That's our assessment, as well, although once we've got them in custody we're free to--” and Phil drops his voice, although he knew that the woman sitting at the hightop in the opposite corner can probably still hear him-- “ _send in The Cavalry_ if that becomes necessary.”

A text message pings on the phone he'd laid next to him on the table. _MM: I heard that_. Phil allows himself an anticipatory wince at the punch on the shoulder he knows he'll get once the team was back on the Bus.

“Gentlemen, I would like to thank you for your service in advance and welcome you to Coulson's Magic Flying Bus,” Phil extends his hand across the table, first to Sam and then to Steve. “Wheels up in 12 hours, and then we're off to save the world from itself.”

“Aye aye, sir.” Their handshakes are firm.


	2. And This Is Why

First Coulson, then Rogers and Wilson depart the coffee shop; Phil is going back to the plane, the two Heroes-with-a-capital-H are off to pack their bags and wrap up their business in Seattle. May gives the girls another thirty minutes in the relative quiet of the coffee shop before sliding her stool back noisily and coughing as she gets up—their signal to head back to the Bus. When they fall in behind her at the Othello Station, she can't help but take in the stoop of each young woman's shoulders and their separate downcast gazes. Simmons has been, as usual, taken aback by what her research has revealed: while working with SHIELD had exposed her to a variety of types of evil, the personal and intimate nature of the garbage she's had to read lately has sapped a lot of her usual spark. Fitz would know what to say to get her mind back on her task, get her brain working harder than her heart—but Fitz isn't on this mission, and that jagged little piece of knowledge is wedging its way further and further into Simmons' slowly breaking heart.

Skye's posture, too, is curved over, but she's pulled taut, not pushed down. Her spine hums like the stave of a drawn bow, tight with anger. Mornings with May are working for her: she's got a handle on that tension, and not likely to unleash it at the wrong target. Still, Melinda hopes to be in the room when a suitable target presents itself: there will be a torrent of blows or words or both, but in either way Skye's thunderstorm of wrath is going to be a thing of beauty.

Right now, though, they're both worn out. There are light-duty sedatives and sleep aids on the Bus that will get them the rest they need, but until these internet idiots are safe behind bars, both Skye and Simmons are going to have to compile a mountain of evidence for the common charges against all of them: conspiracy (to commit anything from sexual abuse to murder to terrorism), inciting violence, hate crimes, even varying degrees of assault in more than one case. 

They are the only ones in the rail car: even at 1230 am, May expected drunks, insomniacs, homeless, but their short commute is a reprieve from some of the bullshit they've spent the day reading about. Walking back to the rendezvous, where Tripp is waiting with the truck, is quiet. Skye and Simmons huddle together along the sidewalk, doing their best to present no attractive target, and May walks a block behind them—and she hasn't felt a worry for her own safety in about twenty years. 

Tripp and the truck are in sight when the trio of thugs May has been expecting stumble out of a bar and almost directly into Simmons and Skye. They're not thugs yet, of course, just drunks, but May has seen enough of these interactions to know where it's going, and she quickens her pace. Skye has her arm around Simmons' shoulders and thus keeps her from landing flat on the sidewalk, but she still rolls her ankle off the curb and voices a sharp groan.

 

“Watch where you're going!” Skye barks, positioning herself between Simmons and the drunks, who are hooting and laughing and looking both women up and down. One drunk makes an unintelligible observation and his buddies laugh. Skye grips her backpack straps and May can tell she's freeing the can of pepper spray from her jacket pocket as she snarls, “No thanks, I'd probably die laughing.”

She still isn't in earshot but Melinda can guess what the response is: various epithets from all three drunks and the first one stands straighter, chest thrust out at the insult. Now Simmons is standing behind Skye, one hand on her backpack as if trying to get Skye to move along. Melinda is almost ready to break into a run as the thug reaches out a hand as if to slap Skye across the face—and then Simmons fills her field of vision because _Simmons has a gun_ and it's silencing barrel is pressed to the forehead of the foremost thug _and he's on the ground_. Objectively May admires her fast and precise draw while subjectively Melinda screams internally and breaks into a sprint.

All three thugs are on the ground and May will cry with relief later, but oh thank gods there are ICER rounds in their foreheads. The truck skids to a stop a second after she does and Tripp all but hauls Simmons and Skye into the backseat while May picks the ICER cartridges out of the exact center of each forehead (and when and where did Simmons have the time to become a gunslinger oh gods).Tripp peels out of the alley and they sit mostly in stunned silence on the way back to the landing site, until Melinda finds her voice and declares, quite simply, that they'll talk about this after the mission is complete. Simmons hands May her gun without a word as they board the Bus.


	3. The Dirty Work

Two days later the teams move in.

Sam, Coulson and Tripp front the majority of the takedowns. Steve shows his face on three of them, and Tony Stark even blows into a notable pair of arrests, cowing the offenders by sheer force of personality and performance while the other four men on the team pack up laptops, tablets, printed materials and various magazines. There are an astonishing number of firearms confiscated and a gut-dropping number of backyard arsonists' toolkits and amateur bomb kits found. There is a lack of eyewitnesses, though, because Skye had the brilliant idea to distribute “water interruption'' notices in all the affected neighborhoods and apartment complexes. Faced with this inconvenience, most stay-at-home neighbors have elected to run errands or simply be elsewhere; the internet jockeys, however, are by and large attentive to their computers, hoping for replies to their latest vitriolic posts attacking the unfairness of the friendzone, or some other such idiocy. Those with normal 9-to-5 hours are acquired on their way home and handcuffed at the front door. Night owls without family concerns are taken in quietly after the sun goes down. 

Once they're in the vehicles and driving away, the noises start: illegal search and seizure is popular; so are Amendments One, Two, Five, Six, Seven, Eleven, Fifteen, and Twenty-six. Miranda Rights are called for, as well as Single Phone Calls and lawyers. Coulson takes a little pleasure in reminding these men that he nor his teams answer to the government (Steve winces a little at this); nor are they the police or any other agency that is bound by the previously-invoked amendments and laws. There are two responses to this declaration: the first is to fall slack-jawed and silent; the second, to attempt to fight their way out of a moving vehicle. This second response is never successful. Sam enjoys making sure the success rate of this second response remains at zero. 

Interrogations are ongoing, and Maria Hill and Melinda take their turns on both sides of the one-way glass. Sharon Carter helps out when the Bus is in Pennsylvania, although she and Steve manage to avoid crossing paths during those sessions. He and Sam trade off with Tripp and Coulson, making sure that those being questioned are quick to realize that hitting on, insulting, belittling, and threatening the agents asking the questions is not going to supersede the expectation of an answer. 

It is grinding, grueling, dirty work. These guys are never nice, in the end, despite their claims, and there are insults and epithets thrown around the interrogation room that Steve (who thought he'd heard the worst that four languages can offer during his time in WWII Europe) is both impressed, but more sickened to hear. They threaten Hill, Carter, May, and the other women who volunteered to shoulder some of this load with rape, with assault, with death. There is no distinction that Sam can see between what they find acceptable to type in a 'private' forum and what they see fit to shout at a human being across the table. When their male counterparts intervene, however, each of the agents holds up a hand or cuts him off verbally...and continues the interrogation as though the threats and insults hadn't happened. At first this seems to Sam as though these dickheads are getting a pass, that the women he's working with are ignoring this terrible behavior and giving socialized silent consent. Later he realizes that this is, in fact, a conditioned response, but one that speeds these interactions along and gets them over with as soon as possible. 

It's all he can do to stop himself from apologizing to every woman he encounters on the Bus, in diners when they stop for meals, or on the street. The agents on this task force assure him that his repeated apologies are unnecessary, and he overhears Simmons telling Tripp that it's salting the wound.

“What else can I do?” Tripp asks, somewhat helplessly.

“Change your behavior. Change your worldview. Change what you were raised to believe,” she replies, and it's as quiet and firm a dismissal as Sam's heard from anyone under the age of 30. He moves away down the hall so as not to embarrass either Tripp or Simmons by letting them know he overheard. 

The weeks fly past in chunks: four days in Minnesota; two in Utah; a solid week up and down the length of California and another across the breadth of Texas. Some of these men's-rights activists elude them: though Coulson, Skye and Simmons take every effort to avoid word leaking out across the forums and message boards, some hatemongers are able to put two-and-two together and see the disappearance of their friends as a sign of incursion. As the May 31 deadline approaches they walk in on more than a few men with detonators wired up on their workbenches and guns broken down for cleaning in preparation of carrying through with threats. Skye goes undercover with Steve, briefly, to pluck two MRAs off a college campus in Virginia. Skye is rightfully proud of herself for stifling her geekitude while on the mission with gorram Captain America, and he's quietly gracious when they're back on the Bus and she allows herself a small moment of nerdy glee at her own successful crossover with the First Avenger. 

“We've got friends on that campus, Agent Skye,” he tells her, gravitas and duty scrawled across _every ridiculously beautiful line_ of his face and form. “I'm just as thankful that you were there to help me keep them safe.”

There are other agents, she knows, besides the eighteen on the Bus, who are doing Coulson the favor of participating in this operation. There are heroes, Heroes, agents, and officials in Europe, Canada, Australia, as well as elsewhere in the USA, who are working just as hard as her teams are to get these guys off the internet and out of arm's reach of the women that they're vowing to 'master', to 'bring to heel', and to destroy. Still, not every asshole on the internet is a potential terrorist, and not every potential terrorist is dumb enough to make an asshole of himself on the internet. They're catching a lot of them, but they can't catch all of them.


	4. Not Over Yet (Or Ever)

The MRA forums settle down, and there is a week of frustrated digging before Skye realizes that the reason she can't find evidence to support felony charges on the majority of the people she's got highlighted is that-- there isn't any. The ones they've left are the windbags, the dicks with no balls, the ones who are more afraid of women than threatened by them. It's not like these leftover MRAs are a better option, but they sure as hell are the lesser of the two evils and while Skye still gets sick reading what they're fantasizing about, it's not the red-flag-warning-bells-fight-or-flight nausea the first batch of scumbags were inspiring. Coulson orders Skye and Simmons to look at other things: for instance, helping Rogers and Wilson track sightings of the Winter Soldier, alternating with half-hours staring at cats with captions and really, really awesome superhero cosplays at the summer cons. Cap and Falcon are grateful for the help (while Steve Rogers' inadequacy with modern technology has been grossly overstated, there are very few people in the world who can dig information like Skye can) and eventually take the growing list of sightings and security-cam grabs as a way to gracefully exit the op. 

Coulson has stood most of the teams down a while ago. Agent Koenig is keeping an eye on those individuals whom Skye flagged as likely to develop into more aggressive actors; he'll have a rotating roster of tech analysts to mine data for him. The rotation was Simmons' suggestion, to keep those who have to read and pick apart this disparagement from drowning in it. 

Simmons is not the same. It's been a hard six months for her: first the whole HYDRA deal, then _Fitz_ , then all of _this_ \--she is harder now, quieter, just as quick to solve a problem but taking less joy from doing so. May does not—has not ever—blame her for pulling the ICER gun on the thugs, back in that alley. She does not have any qualms about giving the weapon back to Simmons, either, who takes it silently, checks the clip, and holsters it. They are in the cockpit, returning to The Playground, and for a moment both agents gaze out at the cloud-shrouded horizon.

“We did make a difference, didn't we?” Jemma asks finally. Her voice is small.

“There are a significantly smaller number of threats out there,” Melinda replies. 

“But they're not gone.”

“...No.” A pause. “They're never going to be gone, not completely.” Jemma doesn't say anything, so Melinda continues: “We'll have to revisit this mission. Agent Koenig will get us a list of potential actors on those threats they feel obligated to make, and at some point we'll have to go defuse them. We'll get them, Jemma. And we'll get the next ones. And in the meantime, we'll take out some other bad guys.”

Jemma turns the ICER pistol over in her hands. “I just wish....” She sighs and doesn't finish the sentence, but Melinda knows what she'd started to say: _I wish I could give one of these to every girl out there._

“I know. But we _are_ making a difference, Simmons. You'll see.”

Jemma smiles once before leaving the cockpit, and May turns her attention back to the flight.


End file.
